FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kansas (Jan. 7, 2021) -- After three years of planning and development, U.S. Army Installation Management Command and Army Community Service are launching a new Volunteer Management Information System Jan. 11.
“(VMIS) is an online program that helps volunteers track their volunteer hours so that their volunteer hours are certified,” said interim Fort Leavenworth ACS Volunteer Coordinator Jessica Brushwood. “We have points of contact that oversee the system for their organization. After a volunteer enters their hours, that person certifies the hours.”
Brushwood said the new VMIS is a modernized update from the previous system.
“The last system was very old and … ‘glitchy,’ so people had a lot of issues with accessing it on certain browsers or they would go in and not find the information they needed,” Brushwood said. “It was not a really intelligent system, so there were some functions that it could’ve done that it didn’t do.
“(The new VMIS) is something that is accessible from anywhere, so it keeps their volunteer history. It is going to be a lot more streamlined and modernized and easier to access,” she said. “For soldiers working toward the Military Outstanding Volunteer Service Medal, they need a certain document to put in for that medal; (VMIS) will actually generate that document for them.”
All service members, family members and Department of the Army civilians volunteering on Fort Leavenworth can use the new VMIS system, logged under Army Family Web Portal. Service members can also log hours volunteered at off-post organizations upon providing a memo proving the hours to Brushwood.
Brushwood said she has high hopes for the new system.
“My overall hope is that the system will be easier to use and that more people will want to use it as a result so that we have more people logging their volunteer hours,” Brushwood said. “The Army likes to know how much money they’ve saved based on the number of volunteer hours that we have.
“(The Army) also uses volunteer hours sometimes to justify a needed position,” she said. “If they see lots of volunteers (performing) a certain job and that there’s lots of volunteer hours going toward a certain job, they may use that to justify hiring somebody to do that job.”
Volunteers who have logged hours on the old system will have their hours automatically transferred over to the new system. New volunteers can visit www.armyfamilywebportal.com before Jan. 11 and https://vmis.armyfamilywebportal.com after Jan. 11 to register.
For more information, e-mail Brushwood at jessica.h.brushwood.civ@mail.mil.
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